Thursday, August 2, 2012

Ever since I repinned a picture of sesame seed balls from Pinterest, I wanted to make these yummies myself. Gosh! It's been almost 6 months now (had to go to my Pinterest board to check when I pinned it). I bought the ingredients but hadn't got to making them. Finally, today I had the time and determination to do it.

* For some reason, I couldn't form a dough with the amount of the flour in some of the recipes I found. It was too soupy. This is what I came up with through experiment. Red bean paste is available at Asian supermarkets. You can use peanut oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil for frying.

Heat the water in the microwave for 1 minute, mix the brown sugar well in the hot water. Place the flour in a big bowl and create a well in the middle. Pour the sugar water into the well and mix it well to form a dough. The dough should be moist and smooth but not too sticky to pry your fingers away from.

Ready for frying

Pinch some off the dough to form a ball about an inch diameter big, make an indentation in the ball, big enough to scoop the red bean paste inside, then pinch the dough to cover up the paste and roll it in your hands to form back the ball shape. Roll the ball in the sesame seeds, make sure it's covered with seeds evenly all around. Line the seed-covered balls up ready for frying.

You can use a wok, a pot or a fryer to fry the balls. Cover the pot with a little over an inch of oil. I find that amount of oil is enough to do the job since the balls aren't that big. Heat the oil up to 350 F. Gently lower the balls into the pot. The number of balls to fry each batch depends on how big your frying vessel is, the rule of thumb is not to crowd it. Also, be aware of the oil temperature will heat up above 350 F, so it's a good idea to turn the heat down and keep an eye on the temp to make sure not to burn the balls!

Floating on the surface

Let the balls stay in the pot about 3:50 to 4 minutes. When they are ready, the balls will float on the surface. Ladle them out and put them on paper towels to drain off some of the extra oil. The whole batch makes about 32 sesame seed balls. They taste best when they are just cooled off, but still taste good even after the crispiness goes away. I don't recommend storing in the fridge however, it will get too chewy I imagine. They are what I call "yum yum". Enjoy!

This is also a good family activity with kids. I bet they will have fun forming the balls and rolling them in the sesame seeds. Of course, they will certainly enjoy eating them, like mine do.

One side note, I recently prepared the balls at night but didn't have time for frying, so I stored them in zip lock bags in the fridge overnight and fried them the next morning. They still tasted good. However, I'm not sure what the maximum of time you can store them in the fridge since the glutinous rice flour will get drier over time.